My five favorite video games of all time

This tweet asking people to list their top five video games of all time is going a little viral. I am very much not a “gamer” — mostly because if I were, I would never get anything else done — so I can’t produce anything like a These Are the Finest Games of the Early Age of Video Games list, but I can share the list of games that I’ve most enjoyed playing over the years.

1. Lode Runner (PC, 1983). Growing up, we didn’t have a Pong console or an Atari like some of my friends and cousins did, but when my parents divorced, my dad bought the first IBM-compatible computer that came out. And one of the few games we had for it was Lode Runner. The game was a blast, but what really put it over the top was the ability to make your own levels. Now that I think about it, that the first video game I ever obsessed over included a built-in level designer maybe primed me for falling in love with the web at first sight. View source?! Uh, yes please.

2. The Legend of Zelda (NES, 1986). Legendary…it’s right there in the name. I played this game so much. One of my finest video game achievements is finishing Zelda using only the wooden sword. Close runners-up: Super Mario Bros (NES) and Tetris on the Game Boy, which I played perhaps more than Zelda and SMB combined. So many batteries.

3. NHL ‘94 (Sega Genesis, 1993). Out of all the games I’ve ever played, I had the most fun playing NHL ‘94 with my friends and floormates in college. We’d play for hours on end, especially during the winter months, people drifting in and out to go to class. I don’t know how I managed to not flunk out of school that year. Runner-up: Tecmo Super Bowl (NES). Everyone had their favorite teams/players, but I was almost unstoppable with Philadelphia and their quarterback, QB Eagles (they couldn’t use Randall Cunningham’s name due to licensing issues).

4. Mario Kart Wii (Wii, 2008). This was a tough one. Mario Kart Wii was not my first Kart nor the best I’ve played (Mario Kart 8 has superior gameplay IMO) and almost no game was more fun than playing 8-player Mario Kart Double Dash with two linked GameCubes in the same tiny NYC apartment. But the Wii version was the first one in which you used an actual freaking steering wheel to pilot your Kart around.

At first, I played because the game was fun and I wanted to beat it. But eventually, I started playing the game when I was stressed or anxious. It became a form of meditation for me; playing cleared my mind and refocused my attention on the present. Even the seemingly stressful elements in the game became calming. The Elders, who spring up to give chase every few minutes, I don’t even notice anymore…which has become a metaphorical reminder for me to focus on my actions and what I can control and not worry about outside influences I can’t control.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Alto’s Adventure helped me work through some of my shit almost as much as seeing a therapist for almost 2 years. Runners-up: Kingdom Rush and Drop7, both of which I played a lot but neither saved my sanity, so…

A few honorable mentions: Quake 3, Bubble Bobble (which I never played in the arcade or on Nintendo but discovered later on MAME), Wii Sports, Metroid, Dune II, Minecraft (I haven’t actually played it that much, but I love watching my kids play), SMB 2, SMB 3, Baseball Stars, and, uh, Cookie Clicker.